


Essa Trevelyan

by thesecondseal



Series: Acts of Reclamation [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Mages and Templars, Original Character(s), Original Character-centric, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 11:46:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3568484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecondseal/pseuds/thesecondseal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Born to the Trevelyan family of Ostwick in the Free Marches, Essa was originally slated for a warrior's life—until magical abilities surfaced tragically just after she reached the age of majority. Essa fled, fearing a life of judgement and confinement within Ostwick's Circle of Magi. After a year on the run, she returned to face the consequences of her own becoming and found comfort and healing among those she had feared would offer only a cage. The Circle might have been Essa's future had the mages not rebelled against Chantry rule.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Warrior

Mathieu Trevelyan joined the Templars when Essa was six years old. She remembered being scared for her big brother and not knowing why. Their parents had not been concerned. A little sad that he was leaving, but so void-taken proud.  It was tradition, after all. There was always a son from House Trevelyan doing the Chantry’s work. Her uncle had served, and her grandfather. She had spent hours staring at the sharp featured portrait of a so many greats aunt who had defied broadest custom and become a mage hunter.

Of course, they weren’t supposed to be hunters anymore. They were noble protectors, caring of their magic-cursed charges. Caring enough, Essa later learned, to hunt down anyone unwilling to submit to a Circle’s leash, or to slit the throat of an abomination. She might not trust mages—it was hard to grow up in a Templar family and harbor them much love—but she that didn’t mean she cared for their jailors. A cage was still a cage, no matter the shape of the bar or the civility of its keepers.

And if there was one thing Ester Trevelyan despised, it was a cage.

She didn’t really remember being trapped in the root cellar, though her mother would recount that awful day with unfading fear. It happened on her third name day, and Essa had been determined to play hide-and-seek with older siblings who had run past their daily limit of patience for a precocious child, running spoiled on sugar and celebration. Mathieu and Cari had told her that she couldn’t play, but she insisted, whining and begging until one of Mathieu’s friends said “Oh, let her hide, we’ll find her quickly and send her back to the nursery.”

Essa had been affronted; she recalled that much. She had determined to hide so well that they would have to admit she was smart enough to play with them. She’d stolen through the kitchen, using all the stealth that Cari had tried to teach her to slip past the staff and down into the cellar.  As the moments slid to hours, Essa’s pride of triumph diminished, and eventually she grew tired of waiting to be found. She had taken a nap amid the barrels of potatoes and onions and turnips, and awoken floundering and uncertain in the dark.

Her mother’s mabari found her, so many hours later that exhaustion had eclipsed panic. Essa lay slumped against the back of the door she had been unable to open. There were no tear stains on her small face; she hadn’t cried or screamed as any other child might have. No one had heard her pounding futilely against the heavy oak door, but her fists were bruised for weeks, knuckles blooded, nails torn down into the nailbeds.

She didn’t remember the panic. Not specifically, but from that moment on, she abhorred small, dark spaces. Couldn’t bear a locked door, or a room without windows. The feeling of being small or helpless, trapped or forgotten.  Essa had stopped chasing the attentions of others. She loved her siblings, but they were of no use to her if they wouldn’t teach her to fight, to soar. To never again be a victim of circumstance.

She had begged to learn to fight and, not unreasonably, Essa’s mother had disapproved.  Her father had fought for her; he thought it would help rid her of the nightmares.

“Empower her,” he said. “Teach her that she is stronger than the shadows.” And he was right, much to her mother’s dismay.

Wulfe Trevelyan had seen it in her, even so young. His little warrior. The sturdy girl child with his wife’s wide grey eyes and not enough laughter in them.  She was always so earnest, gentle hands reaching to touch a petal or pup. She loved the outdoors, craved the solace more after her day beneath the earth. She slept on the window seat of her nursery, pushed up against the glass like a plant seeking the sun. Small hands pressed against the cold panes.

She never cried when the nightmares came. Never called for her nurse or parents when she woke gasping in the night. The great nanny mabari slept at her side, and if she need more comfort than Greta could give her they would steal out into the yard to visit the other animals of the household. He would find them in the wee hours of the morning, and asleep in his wife’s garden,  and when he woke her, her eyes were always filled with stars.

Should he have wondered then?  

Essa could be quiet. She tended toward brooding as she grew, but she wasn’t always somber. Her crooked smile came easily to her, for all that it was not constant. The expression transformed her whole face, striking blue fire in the flint of her eyes and crinkling the corners with joy. Her warmth drew people to her even when she wanted to draw away from them, always needing distance, but too full of love to ever take it for herself.

She was as kind as she was fierce and Essa’s father worried that the world would strip both from her. That her heart would bruise too easily as childhood waned. He made her strong. Strong enough not to hide her heart behind cold reason. Strong enough to protect herself from whatever shadows she might face in an uncertain future.

When she was still too small to see over her father’s shield, Essa began training with a tiny version of her own. She threw herself into training with the same single-minded devotion that her mother showed the Chant. Her sword was a hymn, her shield an unfaltering prayer. By her tenth name day, she had surpassed what her father could teach her, and she waited anxiously for her body to grow, to grant size and strength to her skills.

She struggled with her family’s faith; she did not feel abandoned enough by the Maker to understand the Chantry’s doctrine of unworthiness. She attended services with an increasing reluctance that worried her mother until it placed a rift between them she couldn’t breach. But she studied the teachings of Andraste, found comfort in the life of the Maker’s Bride, even as she bristled at hidden knowledge, at verses forbidden and struck from history.

She began to doubt the Chantry, the full truthfulness of the Chant. The holiness of those who wore the sunburst with such pride. On his brief visits home, Essa watched Mathieu speak in carefully disguised eagerness of standing over the Harrowed bodies of mage apprentices, waiting to see if they would wake from the Fade as mages or abominations. She saw fear and blood lust justified by religious fervor, knew his opinions were common among the people, and reinforced by the Chantry.  She wasn’t one to trust the unpredictable power of mages, but she did not understand binding them to a Circle, locking them in gilded cages and pretending that it was their choice. How fear could lead to such blind disregard for human lives.

She had known with cold certainty—as she watched Mathieu’s eyes light with another sensational tale of a mage’s desperately attempted escape—that the Maker had turned his face from those who claimed to seek it most desperately.

Essa began her own seeking. So many collected books, so many weapons against sanctimony. Her library filled with questions. Heavy volumes gathered dust on shelves; sheaves of parchment scrawled with bits of lost and found history. While others her age were chasing one another in attempts to find themselves, Essa enjoyed her solitude. She spent her time between weapon’s training and tearing the pedestal from beneath Andraste. Beneath too much rhetoric and problematic doctrine, Essa found the woman who had shaped so much of their world.

And loved her.

Her faith reforged, Essa charged into adolescence, in quest of her own grand purpose. She agonized over where she might best serve her devotion. She worried of finding the right place. Of doing the most good. Of not doing enough.  She knew that not all Templars were as her brother, but she could not bring herself to join the Order.  Even with it being her father’s most strident recommendation. She was intrigued by the Seekers of Truth, but she did not think that she could work her way through the Templar Order to receive the necessary training to do so, and she had never heard of a Seeker being recruited from anywhere else. She sent inquiries. Waited for word. She considered pursuing the Grey Wardens.

As she neared the age of her majority, Essa floundered in indecision. Rituals and vows felt like cages crafted with words and manufactured piety. She distrusted the bars of rank and protocol, struggled with authority and a powerful sense of justice. Her father urged to her choose a path, find a cause to which she could dedicate her considerable passion, but Essa was plagued by uncertain commitment.

Then she met Diar. 


	2. Heart Ties

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Diarmont is pronounced "dire-mont" because of future homonyms and my cavalier attitude toward grammar and pronunciation. 
> 
> I'm a terrible person.

Diarmont Stanhope was a half Free Marcher Chevalier turned mercenary and quite possibly the last man in all of Thedas whom Bann Wulfe Trevelyan would have chosen for his youngest daughter. The man and his company had wintered in Ostwick, clearing out nuisance rabble and generally doing good work for little money, but his altruism only went so far to assuage doubts about his character. Diarmont was a rake, a self-proclaimed scoundrel with no remaining family or political ties to even hint at loyalty. He loved Graystone Company, good wine, and a fine romp. Generally in that order, though not always.

He was careless with the affections of at least a half-dozen women during the long, cold months, and Wulfe suspected him of at least one more. That Cari, his most practical child and a woman quite grown, was one amid the throngs of Graystone Company’s ardent admirers made Wulfe ever more determined that Essa would not fall to the ingrate’s charms.

For her part, Essa wasn’t particularly impressed with the swoon-inducing looks and manners of Diarmont Stanhope.  Not the shock of black hair trimmed short at his nape, nor the piercing green eyes that were always laughing, always mocking the world before him. No, if Essa cared about his wiry body, it was for what it and his experience could teach her. She hadn’t really had access to heavy cavalry before, and theirs were fighting skills she wanted. When she propositioned Diar so boldly, she was interested only in learning how to fight from horseback, promising him good pay for easy work.

Ester Trevelyan was hardly Diar’s type, a fact which he was careful to impart to her father with as little offense offered as possible. He could sense the man’s unease upon meeting him. Knew that reputation had preceded him again. True or not.

But Essa, with her near scowl and casual lack of social graces, was so much not his usual choice of companion that his men had neither laughed nor joked when she marched into the Gull and asked to hire him for a few hours a day for an indeterminate length of time. She had very briskly introduced herself and delivered her request, appearing utterly unruffled at being somewhere that it was so obvious she did not belong.

She was military nobility; that much was obvious in every deliberate step. She moved with an economy of motion usually found in older warriors who had not yet left their prime. No feminine sway to her hips, no masculine swagger, just quietly coiled energy. Her hair was brown, pulled up and back in a relentless coronet that only added severity to a sharp jaw and slightly cleft chin. She was young; freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks, but her skin was otherwise unblemished by scar or age. Her palms were callused, strong blunt fingers without spare length of nail.

She was definitely not Diar’s type. He liked long, leggy blondes with more curves and less brooding, smoky redheads with secrets in their eyes. Essa Trevelyan was a first class brooder and her wide eyes were the most guileless he had ever seen.  She made him feel old, though he discovered she was only five years younger than he. He liked tall and lithe, Essa was stalwart. It was the most honest description of her he could give, and while most women would not have thanked him for it, he suspected she would approve. She was comfortable in her skin in a way he rarely saw, and never in one so young.  If she possessed a single pretense, she was a natural master of the Game and would rule in Orlais if she but put her mind to it.

Diarmont accepted the contract mostly out of curiosity, though the young woman had been honest with him: the pay was good, and the work hardly bothersome. She was a quick study, with a good seat and strong bond with her father’s horse, though she would need a proper courser if she was going to fight from horseback. The Fereldan Forder was a good mount, but he was aging, and his mistress had not yet reached her full potential.

His company knew Diar was doomed well before he did. His dalliances—though never so numerous as gossip insisted—dwindled to naught.  Spring approached, a season of fewer, thinner layers and heady gregariousness, and still Diar would rather spend his free time trading bruises with Bann Trevelyan’s peculiar daughter.

When spring came in earnest and the Graystones headed back to Starkhaven, Diarmont remained in Ostwick under the pretense of entering the Grand Tourney. He told himself and his friends that it would be a grand lark, that Gerald—his Courser—missed the fanfare and that the horse deserved a little indulgence having faithfully carried Diar into a less glamorous life. He told himself that Essa needed a bit more time, that she wasn’t ready to be dismissed from lessons.

But they all knew that he wasn’t ready to leave her. They had become a cautious sort of friends, though Essa made certain that he knew she didn’t trust him, nor approve of his philandering ways. He didn’t take the first personally. She was fast friends with those she called the four-legged folk, but she trusted very few who moved on two legs.

It had to be the challenge. Diar had rarely been refused something he wanted, and he was spoiled with women; he couldn’t remember one ever turning him down. It was appalling, really, he chastised himself, that he would be so tempted by her ambivalence. He shoved the offending thoughts from his mind and poured his energies into teaching her what she wanted to learn.

Diar found Essa to be a tireless learner.  Hungry for knowledge for its own sake. Unapologetically naïve and curious. Considering him a paid employee, she asked him about anything that struck her fancy. Tactics and his travels, about the people he had met, how they lived, what they believed. She asked him about his time in Orlais, prodded him on questions of faith until she caught herself in some imagined breech of etiquette. She was a passionate philosopher, and would debate the conjugation of a verb or the translation of a canticle. He loved those moments best , when her usual austerity melted away, and she was gesturing passionately with hands or sword and all Diarmont could do was grin helplessly at her, her laughing as he accused her of heresy.

Eventually, he saw her smile, hesitant curves of lip, a faint lightening of the eye. Months passed before she relaxed against his banter, but eventually she stopped tensing in expectation of reprimand. Who had hurt her? he wondered, surprised at the power of his rage.  Who had made her feel that her thoughts were in need of censure?  

He found his answer one late winter evening. Essa—who was not always prompt, but always considerate--didn’t show up for her lesson nor send word of her delay. Diar waited all day on the headland where they met to train, worrying over what might have happened. Finally he rode to her house to ask after her, but no one could tell him where she was or when she would return. It had frustrated him that no one seemed concerned with her absence.

“She does this,” the lady of the house informed him in an offhand manner that made him ache for Essa.  “Bann Trevelyan will be back from Markham tomorrow. If she hasn’t returned by then, he will send someone out to look for her.”

She sighed. “Or go after the spoiled child himself.”

Diar nodded as politely as he could, not trusting himself to keep his defense of Essa behind his teeth. He waited for Essa’s mother to go back inside,  then scouted the stables. The Forder was gone. Greta, the ancient mabari that Essa always said helped her father raise her, was in none of her usual sunny sleeping spots. Dread washed over him, and Diarmont grabbed the attention of the stable hand.

“The mabari?” he asked, not wanting to give words to his suspicion.

The boy nodded. “This morning,” he said softly. “Essa—Lady Ester—“

He broke off stammering.

“It’s al’right,” Diar assured him. “Your lady has given you a great gift in her friendship, you would only insult her not to cherish that familiarity.”

A slow nod. Then: “ _Essa_ found her this morning, ser. Passed soft and sweet as any of us might hope for. She was very old.”

"I know,” Diar assured him. “Do you know where she’s gone now?”

The boy closed his lips firmly and Diar had the thought that even torture would not break the loyalty Essa had inspired in him.

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Fin, ser.”

“Fin, I’m Diarmont. Friends call me Diar. It’s good to meet you.”

“I know who you are, ser,” the boy managed in a shaking voice. “Essa don’t need no comforting, right now, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

He frowned belligerently up at Diar, made it plain from the glare in his blue eyes that he suspected Diar of dishonorable intentions toward his lady. The boy’s hands balled into fists at his sides.

Diar nodded. “I can see you care a great deal for Essa,” he said. “And I know that she has retreated to somewhere to be alone, but that doesn’t mean that she should be.”

Diar placed one fist over his heart.

“Please,” he entreated. “I will give any vow that you require that I have nothing but respect for your lady, and want only to make sure she is well. By the Maker, in Andraste’s name… whatever will put you at ease. I will go to her only this once and I will never again intrude upon her haven without her express desire.”

The boy stared at him for a long moment.

“By Andraste’s mabari,” he demanded, rebellion blazing in his eyes. “Swear by the mabari. Essa will hold you to your vow if Blessed Andraste doesn’t.”

Dia stared down at the boy in awe. What was his friend to command such fervent love in one so meek? He made his vow to Fin, and when the boy was satisfied he told Diarmont of the cove. It was a half-day’s ride and he was late starting, but his courser was younger than Essa’s mount, he was determined they make up the time.

“Thank you, Fin,” he said, using all the honest charm he had.

“If you hurt her—“ Fin replied, biting the words back and looking away. “Don’t hurt her.”

Since their first day of training he had knocked her off her horse, sprained her wrist, and left a substantial number of bruises on her sun-kissed skin.

“I…” Diar faltered.

The look Fin shot him was shrewd.

“Her heart,” the boy said. “Don’t hurt her heart.”

Diar nodded. “I shall so endeavor,” he promised. “With all my strength.”

The boy dismissed him, and Diar set out at speed. 


	3. Honorable Intentions

It was approaching midnight by the time he found her. The moon was a high sliver that gave little light. A fire blazed; he could smell charred flesh and sweet burning oil. He charged down the embankment, scattering scree and making all manner of noise to announce his arrival. Essa and the Forder faced him, battle ready and

Side by side.

Diar smiled as he pulled his horse to a stop.

“I’m sorry, “ he said, hastily dismounting. “I persuaded Fin to tell me where you were.”

She glared up at him through the light of Greta’s pyre.

“What do you mean ‘persuaded’?”

He could see grief in her eyes, but she leapt to the stable boy’s defense, a promise of retribution in her voice. Diar cursed his silver tongue that both she and Fin had suspected him of parsing cruel words.

Diar held up both hands. “I vowed that I mean you no harm, Essa Trevelyan. And I will give you the same vow I made him if you need it.”

She raised one brow at his uncharacteristic earnestness.

“Who did you swear by?”

Diar’s gaze drifted to Greta’s funeral pyre, before sliding away to the rolling black sea.

“By Andraste’s mabari,” he said softly.

She didn’t weep, not with tears or sobs, but Diar felt his heart would break as she slid to her knees in the sand.

“He’s a good boy,” she whispered.

He had to sit beside her to hear her over the fire and the surf.

“He loves you,” he replied. “It surprised me to see how much.”

“Am I so unlovable then?” she asked.

He thought she meant it teasingly. She was as oft to use humor as deflection as he was, though her sense of it was very dry, but Diar answered her truthfully.

“No, Essa. You are not unlovable.”

He slipped an arm around her, normally such an easy motion. Diar had an affectionate nature, casually touching friends, families, lovers, and even acquaintances on so many occasions that such actions would have become meaningless but for the depth of his loyalty. But Essa was different, she was stiff beneath his touch, and he was awkward with the offer of comfort. He had put bruises on her body, dragged her from the dirt with a hand only to knock her down again, but this…this was so much harder.

Essa sighed and slowly relaxed against the side of his body.

“Are you my friend, Diar?” she asked. “I think that you are, against our best efforts.”

He chuckled. “I think you’re right.”

She stared at the pyre for a long silent moment.

“Greta and my father have always been my best friends,” she said simply. “She had a long, good life and painless death, but I will miss her.”

She breathed steadily in the night, steeping in the quiet, wrapping it around her like armor. Diar wanted to pull her closer, hold himself with her in the barrier she placed between herself and the world.

“I will tell Fin that he did well to trust you,” she mumbled tiredly.

Diar couldn’t find his voice; he couldn’t remember having ever lost it before.

“Fire’s dying,” he managed, frantically waving away the whispers of his heart.

“Yes,” she pulled away from him, rose unsteadily to her feet.

She walked to closer to the smoldering pyre.

“I apologize for my voice,” she said, whether to him or Greta, Diar couldn’t be certain. “It is only passing fair, but it is all that I have to give you.”

And then she lifted her voice and sang Greta to Andraste’s side.

*

After that night, there was no going back for Diar. She asked him, one fine morning when spring was just greening the headland, if he thought she might spend a year or two with the Graystones, get some experience under her belt, learn a little about life outside the security of her father’s home. She was searching for answers, she said. And thought that maybe it was time she sought them outside of her books.

Diar thought the life would suit her, but he couldn’t take her on without her knowing his feelings for him. If she rejected him—and Maker! She had the sense to, so it was likely—then at least they would know where they stood before they got on the road.

He went to her father first, laughing at himself as he declared his intentions, sober and stumbling in a way that he had never expected to. He hoped it would be a grand joke between them one day, the suave Chevaliar reduced to fumbling declarations.

Wulfe Trevelyan’s love for his daughter was earnest and humbling. Diar hoped the man recognized something of that love in him, because there was nothing that he could say, no promises he could make. Nothing that would prove him good enough for her.

“Essa has always made her own way,” her father said.

“I’m not asking you for her hand,” Diar refuted the implication with a frown. “I’m asking if you’re going to challenge me to a duel I can’t win if I ask _her_ for it.”

Wulfe smiled. “I have watched you both,” he said calmly. “You’ve trained her well, as did I before you.”

Diar nodded, patiently waiting to see where the conversation was headed.

“If you break her heart, she’s likely to challenge you herself,” Wulfe warned.

“She wants to join the Graystones,” Diar admitted. “We would be lucky to have her, but I won’t have her coming on board not knowing how I feel.”

“And how do you feel?” Wulfe asked.

Diar sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Like I’m capable of things I never dreamed of,” he confessed. “Both great and terrible.”

Wulfe nodded.

“I won’t give you my blessing,” he told Diar. “I’m a doting father. I would be false if I said I didn’t want her to stay safe here. But it won’t be long before she feels bars in the press of home and hearth. I would rather her fly as she will.”

It was more than he had hoped for. Diar nearly ran her down as he rushed to the stable to find her with every intention of declaring his love the moment he saw her. Instead, he stumbled over her just outside the door to the yard, knocking her to the ground and scattering the tangle of fine Orlesian tack she was carrying.

Essa smiled up at him , blinking in surprise as he caught her by the elbows and yanked her to her feet.

“I’m sorry,” he said, dusting her off as if she hadn’t been covered in one layer of dirt or another since the day they met.

“It’s fine,” she assured him. “Truly, I am glad you’re here, you can meet Ingrid.”

He helped her gather the fallen tack, sharing the burden. She caught his free hand with hers and nearly skipped to the stable, dragging him behind her. He grinned, swept up in her excitement. The weeks since Greta’s death had been hard on her. She was restless, sad, ready for the next stage of her life. It was so damn good to see her smiling.

Essa threw back the heavy stable door, leaving it open so that sunlight streamed into the first stall. The other horses in the stable nickered, calling for attention, but the grey before them only threw up her head and stared down the proud white blaze at them. Essa dropped her bundle of tack to the ground in front of the stall. Humming in approval, she reached for the pink velvet nose, fingers stroking gently over the delicate curves of the Courser’s nostrils.

“Aren’t you just magnificent?” she crooned, earning a begrudging nuzzle from the horse. Ingrid lipped gently at her palm, seeking a treat.

“Father had her brought from Nevarra,” she said. “He sent for her after our second week of training, but I think he is relieved the timing of her arrival.”

Essa gently scratched the mare’s jaw. “No one could ever replace Greta,” she said. “And he knows that, but I think that loving someone new might help with the grieving.”

Diar’s hand tensed in hers, reminding them both that she still held his hand. Essa let go slowly, as if she weren’t certain she wanted to.

“Ingrid,” she said, addressing the horse. “This is Diarmont Stanhope. He’ll be among our competition at the Tourney.”

Diar blinked. “The Tourney?” he asked, incredulously. “It’s only four weeks away, Essa, you can’t seriously be considering entering with _the horse you just got_?”

Both Essa and Ingrid looked so insulted that Diar would have laughed if he hadn’t realized his mistake. No one _ever_ told Essa Trevelyan “can’t.”

“I put my name in this morning,” she said coolly. “It will be good experience; I’ve no illusions about winning.”

She glared at him. “Though, I should warn you, Ser Stanhope, I’m considering very seriously that I might just have to beat _you_ for my own satisfaction.”

She grabbed a brush from the box outside the stall and then let herself in with Ingrid. “I’m going to take her out for a ride,” she said. “I was hoping you wouldn’t mind postponing today’s training in favor of getting acquainted with my lady here. We would love for you to join us. You can appraise our form.”

Diar smiled ruefully.

“That will be fine,” he said, choosing his words carefully, wary of anything else he might say that would get him into trouble.  “Shall I wait for you? Or would you like me to come back at our usual time?”

Essa frowned as if it had just occurred to her that he was there when he should not have been.

“Have you bedded my sister?” She asked the question so boldly Diar nearly tripped over his own feet.

“What? No!”

The accusation stung. He had bedded a number of sisters…but none belonging to Essa Trevelyan.

She shrugged. “Makes no never mind to me,” she mused. “But it will matter to my father.”

She stared at Ingrid’s black and brown mane as she smoothed the soft brush down the horse’s spine.

“You’ve honorable intentions toward me, don’t you, Diar?” the query was teasing, as if she were reproving him of something slightly salacious rather than the exact opposite.

Diar frowned at her, utterly affronted. “I most certainly do not.”

The idea of it, really.

Essa snorted, startling Ingrid with her laughter and causing the Courser to shy and snort in return.  Diar watched them helplessly as Essa used hands and voice to calm the skittish horse.

“I’ll be waiting in the courtyard,” he announced.

Essa cast him a quick glance. “Are you running from me, Diar?”

She seemed puzzled at the notion.

“I just think,” he looked down the stable aisle at where Fin was cleaning stalls. “I—“

He wanted to kiss her, and in that moment, he realized she knew it.

“I like knocking you down,” he said defiantly.

Her laughter was so unexpectedly full and rich that every head in the stable turned to look at them. Only one was human, but Diar felt naked beneath Fin’s scrutiny.

“I like knocking you down too,” Essa said, as if such were a comfort.

Diar glared at her.

“And that is a terrible basis for a courtship,” he declared.

Then he stalked outside, the beautiful song of her laughter trailing behind him.


	4. Magefire

Essa and Diarmont were married late in the afternoon of the Grand Tourney, still covered in dirt and sweat and laughter and surrounded by a number of her family and his friends. They had come in for the Tourney, but Essa couldn’t help feeling it was the Maker’s will that so many whom they care for were already gathered.

After several successful rounds against other competitors, fate had placed them against one another. They had fought until their horses abandoned them. The contest on the ground drew a crowd that soon whispered about the dashing former chevalier and Bann Trevelyan’s fierce youngest.

“Yield, damn you,” Essa gritted, yanking off her helmet and swiping her arm across her brow in an attempt to keep sweat from her eyes. “You know you’re outmatched on the ground Stanhope.”

Some kind soul in the crowd had called for a pause. Diar and Essa stood panting from exertion as Bann Trevelyan stepped into ring to bring them each a skin of water. Diar lifted his visor and gulped down most of the offering. She was right, he thought, laughing. If she had stayed down when he unhorsed her it would have one thing; he had far more years of experience than she did in that area, but she had gotten to her feet with surprising quickness and yanked him from Gerald’s saddle before he or the horse could think to kick her back.

“A draw would be more than fair,” Bann Trevelyan murmured so that the crowd would not hear him.

Essa squinted through the bright sunshine, grey eyes searching Diar’s.

“It would be a shame to beat you any more senseless,” she said. “I have plans for that body of yours tonight if you can still move it.”

Diar was so shocked by her brazen flirtation that he dropped his sword. He stared down at it in embarrassed horror, and could only hope he wasn’t gaping at her like some innocent choir boy.

Her father coughed and slipped away to give them the appearance of privacy.

Essa grinned at him.

“Marry me, Diarmont Stanhope,” she whispered the words, giving him a way out as if he would be stupid enough to take it.

“What was that?” he asked, so loudly that the crowd quieted to listen to them both.

Essa blushed, complexion blooming beneath her tan. “I said ‘Marry me, Diarmont Stanhope!’”

The crowd roared around them, and she smirked at him, lifting her chin in challenge. He dropped his shield, tore his helmet off and beamed down at her.

“Is that a ‘yes’?!” one of his company shouted from the throngs of spectators.

Diar glanced at Bann Trevelyan and saw that the man was smiling.

“If she’s fool enough to want me,” Dair called cheerfully. “Then I am smart enough to have her.”

He pulled her close in clatter of armor.

“Are you certain?” he asked, smiling down into her face.

“Don’t be daft,” Essa said pertly. “Of course I am.”

He kissed her then, and was still dropping kisses on her head and face and hands an hour later when the excited crowd followed them to the closest chantry and the Graystones dragged some poor cleric from the festivities to observe the rites. The merriment that followed was almost more than either of them could bear. Neither had time alone, much less with the other. They were swept from one well-wisher to next. Essa’s sister was crying happily as bawdy tavern songs filled the air, the Graystones singing loudest of all. Essa began to fear she had been kissed more times by strangers than her new husband. She breathed a sigh of relief when the celebration was swallowed up the Grand Tourney’s jubilant end. As night descended with increased revelry, Essa dragged him to her family’s tents.

Only to find hers was no longer among them.

“Map,” her sister said when Essa charged into the family pavilion confusion plain on her face.

Cari held out a piece of parchment and walked Essa back to the door.

“You don’t want to be surrounded by people tonight,” she said smiling softly. “And you’re going to both want a bath.”

Essa glanced down at the map in her hands, saw that her tent had been moved a considerable distance away, tucked into the woods.

“Thank you,” she said, surprised by the consideration.

Cari hugged her. “Now go on,” she said. “I’m not telling mother for three days, but after that you’re going to have to tell her that you’ve married a mercenary and that you’re leaving with his scurvy crew.”

Essa giggled. “They’re mercs, not pirates.”

Cari glanced over Essa’s shoulder at Diar.

 “Andraste preserve us, he would be a lovely pirate,” she said wistfully. “Now get out of here.”

They didn’t need to be told again. Essa and Diar made their way to her tent, surprised to find it very much hidden in the forest. Cari and company had followed a wildlife trail in, found a small watering hole with surprisingly clear water. Essa’s camp stool was placed by the bank, holding a bucket, clean rags, and a bar of soap. They were kissing and laughing as they shrugged out of their clothes, thankful that the Graystones had liberated them of their horses and armor hours ago with promises to tend to both.

Essa stripped with an efficient lack of modesty until she realized Diar was watching her with interest. She paused, fingers tangling in last narrow bits of linen.

“Maker’s breath,” he said, closing the distance between them. “You are beautiful.”

When she cocked a brow at him in skepticism, he smiled and kissed her until she believed him.

The first time was a rush of desperate, grasping touches and kisses gone clumsy with passion. Diar thought once to slow them down, to take his time with her, but it was impossible to think when she caught fire in his arms.  When she was begging for him, intrepid and shameless. They had kissed more than a few times in the past weeks, and there was no shyness in Essa for all of her innocence.  

“Now,” she said, arms and legs wrapped tight around him. “Please, Diar.”

She tugged on his earlobe with her teeth, swept her tongue behind his ear and then blew across the moisture. Diar shivered.

“Please,” she said again, and this time the plea had an edge of command to it.

“I do not want to hurt you,” he argued, voice and body strained.

“Maybe I want you to,” she coaxed softly. “Just a little.”

She scooted down, enough to torture them both.

“You can make sweet, leisurely love to me next time,” she promised, a teasing glint in her eyes as she slid down around him.

*

He held her to that promise, and showed her the value of patience. Essa lay on a blanket beneath the trees, the cool green canopy interrupted only by patches of starlit sky.  She was no stranger to her own body, to its strength or potential, to the pleasure it could find in touch; Diar showed her that her body was also precious.

He built a fire in her, until her skin was stretched, too small for the glorious creature she had become. Essa sighed into the night, lips murmuring prayers and praises, hands grasping helplessly, yanking at the blanket, tunneling through the damp silk of his hair. Clutching, tugging, holding him to her until she burned.

Raged in ecstasy.

She cried out as she climaxed. He laughed softly and drove her up again relentlessly until she was senseless and scorched. Until her ears were filled with the rush of blood and the sound of her own desperate cries.

She frowned when his body left hers abruptly. Then, beyond the pounding of her heart, she heard him screaming. Essa went cold. She opened her eyes, found herself staring up through a red haze.

“Diar!”

She couldn’t find him, couldn’t see him through the bright, unrelenting heat. They had been attacked, she realized in confusion and terror. She searched vainly through the smoke filled night for sight or sound of dragon or mage.

“Diar!” She called for him again, climbing to her feet, searching for him in the chaos.

Essa caught a glimpse of him through the haze, saw him stumbling, falling, twisting, and burning toward the watering hole. She grabbed for the blanket, thought only of wrapping him in it, smothering the flames. She didn’t realize then that she couldn’t feel the heat. That she was unmarked while his skin split and cracked and his screams choked into silence.

She watched the blanket turn to ash in her hands, looked down to find the skin of her hands glowing rose and gold, limned in silver-blue.

 _Mage._ Essa realized, horror growing beyond any denials she might have tried to make.

“Andraste, no, please, please, no,” she was praying again. Begging with tears that didn’t fall before they were vaporized.

She crawled toward Diar’s still, charred body, telling herself that he wasn’t past the help of healers, that she didn’t smell cooked flesh amid the burning trees. Embers and ash rained down in scarlet and gold. But the blackened husk at the water’s edge left no room for denial. The inferno that he had built within her had licked out of her skin, consuming them both in its terrifying greed.  And that there was no escaping that destruction.

She placed a shaking hand on his face, so blackened she could barely recognize it as human. She knew that he was gone from it, that as horrible as his death had been, it had at least been quick. Power flared in the wildness of her grief leaving only cinders.

“Mage,” the word was spat. A brief tangle of invocation droned from Mathieu’s lips and the flames vanished, leaving Essa naked and cold, kneeling amid the ashes of her love.

She knew that he had dispelled the vicious conflagration, but she couldn’t be grateful. She could hear the disgust, icy and cruel as he ordered to her get to her feet.

“Woe to you mage, bringer of ash.”

They were not his words, she would later learn them in fullness, but they broke something in her. Something cold and dark that knew nothing of flame.

“Clothe yourself,” he said, throwing his cloak to her.

How she caught the garment, Essa didn’t know. Her world was a desolate bank of dying coals. She wrapped herself in the coarse material, felt it scrape her oversensitive skin with agony and her brother’s hate. He accused her as she stood within the black charred clearing. Liar, murderer, apostate, abomination. He accused their father of harboring an untrained mage in their midst. Of keeping her secret for so many years and endangering them all with his blasphemy. He didn’t know what decent Circle would take her not after this, but he would do his duty. He would take her in chains to those who would judge her. He would make them see how deadly she was. How living unchecked for so long had made her a monster. He would see her made Tranquil.

“I will not go with you,” Essa whispered dully, dropping his cloak to the ground.

“You will,” he returned with brutal menace. “Your magic cannot touch me. You will come, willing or not.”

He took a step toward her and fury swept her, cold and unquenchable. Essa closed the distance between them in a rush, yanked his knife from his belt and sheathed it in his throat before he registered that she had moved.  Mathieu stared at her, eyes wide and unblinking as she watched him fall to the ground.

“It wasn’t the mage you should have feared,” she told him, watching numbly as his fingers clutched weakly at the dagger’s hilt. 


	5. Apostate

Mathieu had been the first to come to the flames. He knew magefire when he saw it, knew the particular screams that accompanied immolation. Graystone Company was not far behind him, and by some twist of the Maker’s will, they found her before the crowds and the Templars came. Essa wouldn’t remember the quick, ruthless moments of assessment as Erik, Diar’s second in command, dragged her sobbing from the wreckage of the life she had only just grasped. She didn’t hear the terse, painful discussion had by him and the rest of the company while Prin, his wife and the company’s healer, dressed Essa in someone else’s clothes.  

They dragged Essa from her despair long enough to ask exactly two questions: “Did you know?” and “Do you want to go to a Circle?”

Essa answered both with the same heartbroken “no.” They had lost one of their own and she could hear the stunned whispers and broken voices as grief took hold of them all. Her own brother had not believed her, but they, who owed her no love and no loyalty, accepted the awful truth. She had been made mage.

“Here,” Prin said, tears in her eyes, voice filled with sorrow’s quavering. “Drink this. It will keep you asleep until we can get you to help.”

Essa didn’t know what the draught was, if it was some magical ability dampener, or raw lyrium meant to put her out of their misery. She didn’t care. She downed the small vial in one quick gulp.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, as the tears began again. “I’m so sorry.”

And then there was only blessed darkness.

*

They showed her the same loyalty they would have shown Diar. Essa woke a week later in the wilderness, in a small village of apostate mages whom the company assured her could be trusted. Once Essa might have laughed at the idea, the warrior child who had grown up not knowing how to trust much of anyone.  There was no laughter now. There was only remorse. She survived the first few weeks only because they forced her to. Because Prin would return from whatever mission they were on and beg her not to waste away. For Diar’s sake if not her own. But Essa could not recall his face, or the sound of his voice shaping her name. She could only remember the fire, the charred remains, and the echoes of screams.

She considered daily ending it all. It couldn’t’ be so hard, she thought, to walk off a mountain edge and tumble into the Fade. Would he be waiting for her? she wondered. And if he was, would he greet her with forgiveness or hatred? She thought too often that it was worth the gamble.

And then one morning, she couldn’t keep down the breakfast they had guilted her—again—into eating. Prin’s eyes widened and before Essa could collect herself, the woman had dragged one of the other healers to her side.

The Maker was mocking her, Essa thought without much malice. He had to be. She had been with a man precisely twice and he had died for it. Now she was carrying his child. A creature conceived in the very flames that had killed her father and born her mother into a new and unwanted life.

Essa stopped considering suicide after that. Whether she wanted her life or the child’s, she loved Diar too much to let either of them languish. She found anew the focus and discipline she had possessed since childhood. She learned to control what she was, began studying with a single-minded purpose that left no time for the ponderings of her empty heart. She tried to love the life that was growing within her, tried to forgive it for being there when its father was not. Failed to forgive herself that Diar’s child would grow up without him.

Or her.

“You don’t have to leave,” Prin said, hands pressing gently on Essa’s distended belly. “You know that, right?”

No one had come for her in the months that she had lived with the mages. The Graystones laid false trails all across Thedas, kept her family and the Templars from even guessing where she might be.

“I know,” Essa replied.

She did know. In the past nine months, Diar’s company had become family. They were a wild, unruly bunch, full of goodness and laughter, loyal beyond death. She loved them too much to remain a burden.

And it was time she faced the consequences of her life’s turning.

“You’re certain you want her,” Essa asked.

She had asked so many times that they had all lost count, but Prin’s answer was always the same.

“She’s mine too, Es.”

There was a rueful smile. She was right, of course. Prin had been by Essa’s side through the entire pregnancy, singing songs to the child as she grew, whispering stories of her father’s adventures when Essa was asleep and could not be wounded by them.

“And you will be welcome in our life always,” Erik said, joining them. “She will know both of her parents, when she’s old enough.”

Essa leaned against him, caught his hand and placed it over Prin’s, over the child.

“Don’t…” she sighed. “I don’t want her to think that I left her for wont of love.”

“Never,” the Graystone’s captain declared softly.

When she survived Hope’s birthing without losing control of her magic, Essa knew that she was ready to return to Ostwick. She had learned what the apostates could teach her, and had left the most precious consequence of her life in the care of those who would love her more than she could.

“They think that we killed your brother,” Erik told her on the day that she left.

It was the first any of them had spoken of the slain Templar.

“Let them,” he ordered gently.

She opened her mouth to protest.

“Let them, Essa. For me. This will be hard enough for you and your family.”

She had learned in her months with them that “for me” usually meant “for Diar’s memory” and she was helpless against that entreaty.

“For you,” she promised.


	6. Circle

It wasn’t as hard as Essa expected, surrendering herself to the Ostwick Circle. The mages were understanding of what she had suffered, and she found few Templars like her brother, though she was reluctant to trust either too much. She did not mind the gilded cage; it helped knowing that the phylactery that was supposed to hold her blood did not. She had taken care of that problem her second year; grief and doubt had not made Essa a complete fool. She would leave when she wanted, and she would not be tracked through her blood.

Her family was relieved with her choice. Her father and Cari visited regularly, though they did not ever mention Mathieu or the year she spent where the Maker only knew. The years at Ostwick were kind to her. Kinder than she deserved. But somehow, in the most unlikely place, Essa learned to live with who she had become. She bore scars, both inside and out, but with Andraste’s grace, she healed.

Essa started out like all other fledgling mages: as an apprentice. She was a novelty given that she was past the age of majority when she joined their ranks of children, some as young as six years old. There had not been someone to wake so late to their abilities in decades. Oh, everyone knew of someone—Essa wasn’t as rare as all that—but what details she had given them of her story earned her the character of a tragic romantic figure. And her quiet temperament and kind demeanor only added to the lore.

She did not remain there as long as the others, but she enjoyed spending her first few years surrounded by children. If they made her yearn for the time she lost with Hope, they also reminded her of why it had been so vital that her child not live within such confines, nor face her mother’s legacy.

Essa learned early to ignore the sympathetic whispers and deflect the too-personal questions. People were curious, she understood that, and the tales of Bann Trevelyan’s youngest were the makings of tragic ballads and enduring legends. She could only hope her name would fade from the stories, and that time’s embellishments would be kind to her.

For the most part she kept to herself, to the library, and the yard. She helped with the four-legged folk, surrounded her heart with familiar comforts where she could find them. She mastered inferno and fear, determined that her single loss of control would be her only.

When she underwent her Harrowing and found more than one demon waiting for her the Fade. 

At night, in the privacy of her room, she kept her body in fighting shape. If she occasionally felt trapped by the life she had chosen as recompense for her crimes, she did not bang against the bars. 

She refused her first offer of promotion to enchanter. Her instructors were confounded; she received highest marks, demonstrated unparalleled discipline, but Essa knew the Circle did not have her full loyalty.  A part of her understood why mages could not be free, but she didn’t like it, and she did not approve of the voices like her brothers. Fear mongers who stirred hate and ignorance to gain power. She knew that one day, and one day soon, she would tire of sacrificing liberty for security.

The Kirkwall Rebellion occurred four years after she joined the Circle of Magi at Ostwick.Just a year past her Harrowing, Essa was not ready to leave, but she knew then that her time in the Circle would soon draw to an end. She filled the years that followed with an almost frantic devotion to her study, determined that if the Circle fell, she would be prepared for independence.

She considered the life of a wandering apostate, and the lure of such solitude was strong.  With political unrest escalating and Circle of Magi revolting one after another, the Circle at Ostwick refused to take side and Essa felt the bars of their neutrality close in around her. She did not want all-out war between the Templars and mages, and bloody rebellion solved nothing. Essa had experience firsthand the good works of a proper Circle of Magi, but she saw the need for justice and understood the call for change.

Still, she had more questions than answers in her heart, and she lost friends and family in the war that followed the debacle at Kirkwall. Essa did not think her voice cool or calm enough for leadership among the Ostwick mages. She was surprised then, when the First Enchanter asked her to be a delegate to Divine Justina’s Conclave. She of all people understood the value of the Circles, and it was hoped that as a member of the nobility, she might have some sway.

Her standing with her family had improved over the years, but she didn’t think it granted her any particular influence. She had not lost her father’s love, and somehow, despite, everything in her past, she and Cari had only grown closer. Her mother rarely acknowledged that she had a mage daughter, but Essa had made peace with that; she rarely acknowledged that she had a human mother, after all.

Amid the broad branches of her extended family, Essa was just one of a dozen tragic, eccentric Trevelyans. To the rest of the family, she had simply had a rough year, wandering the wilds lost and afraid of her newfound power. They were proud of her—she had been shocked to learn—for making it back from the brink, and claimed her survival and success as further proof of the indomitable Trevelyan will.

By all outside appearances, Essa was grateful for their support. She accepted the post and the title of enchanter necessary for it. It was only when she was alone with her secrets that she felt the fraud. She prepared for the Conclave in a swirl of nerves. She prayed to Andraste, searching for the purpose she had lost, desperate to find something of herself that she recognized. The woman in the mirror looked too like a stranger these days.

Essa knew who she had been, but she wondered who she was.


End file.
